


A Father's Lie

by Only_Jonsa



Series: My Brother, My Alpha, My King [6]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Dreamsharing, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-03
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-03-15 06:28:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29184774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Only_Jonsa/pseuds/Only_Jonsa
Summary: A two part continuation of the drabble series from Bran's POV.
Relationships: Jon Snow/Sansa Stark
Series: My Brother, My Alpha, My King [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2128032
Comments: 52
Kudos: 101





	1. Dreams

**Author's Note:**

> I will not do what they did on the show and glamorise Rhaegar Targaryen's abduction of Lyanna Stark. I know they implied it was a consensual elopement, but I struggle with that concept for many reasons which is not an invitation for debate, just me forewarning people: his position of power as an older man, the heir apparent and then King; his obsession with Prophesy; not to mention the fact that he abandoned his first wife and children to their death in order to take something young and beautiful that he wanted for himself. That, to me, is the epitome of entitlement and abuse of power. I am sorry to those who thought it was a beautiful love story. I will not be writing it that way.

After his fall, Bran slept for an age, or at least that is how it had felt at the time.

Broken and silent, his body had laid abed, with his eyes shut, and only the gentle movement of his chest up and down and the colour in his cheeks an indication that he was still alive.

His restless mother had anxiously watched over him, praying, only ceasing to prevent an intruder with a dagger from harming him further, fighting him off with her bare hands. His mother, who had always protected her children fiercely, could not have known what secrets she was keeping alive when she saved him that day.

No one could have imagined the knowledge he had acquired climbing the old tower, and why his living had been such a threat to the kingdom at the time: secrets he had no need to speak of when he eventually woke; secrets that mattered little now that Joffrey was dead, his true parents imprisoned in the dungeons of the Red Keep.

Just as none could have imagined what Bran had seen before his fall, they also could not know what he had seen since, acquiring knowledge far more dangerous than Cersei Lannister laying with her twin brother.

Bran’s mind had not been as calm as it had appeared during that age in which he slept. It had been full of dreams: some dreams which he had been able to pass onto his father; dreams that had prevented a future that would have surely destroyed their family. 

His mind was still full of dreams now. This time not of the future, but of the past. Lately they had been centred around a dying woman in a bed of blood, kept away from her family by the man who took her from them, trapped in a tower, whilst he went off to fight for his kingdom.

“Father loved her, you know,” Bran couldn’t help announcing to his family one evening, as they sat by the hearth in his mother’s solar; with Robb pacing anxiously, as he had since Jon left; and Sansa looking desolate.

“And whom do you speak of?” his mother enquired, barely looking up from her embroidery to acknowledge him, the strain in her voice showing her displeasure with the conversation already. Bran decided that it was time she knew the truth.

“Jon’s mother,” Bran replied honestly.

A sharp intake of breath from somewhere and his mother’s embroidery fell to the floor. He looked up and saw grief anew in her face. Bran did not wish to bring her pain. He only wished to take it away and heal his family.

“That’s enough,” barked Robb anxiously, walking over to comfort their mother with a hand on her shoulder.

“What do you mean?” Sansa enquired, Jon’s name making her alert suddenly. She seemed to always want to talk of Jon now.

“You don’t know anything Bran, so you should learn to keep your mouth shut,” Arya snapped. She was always angry these days, even more so than usual.

His gaze flicked over to Rickon, who looked like he was yearning for bed and had no interest whatsoever in what the rest of them were talking about. Briefly, Bran remembered how much simpler things were before the fall, when he had simply been a boy like Rickon: before he had slept and grown an age; his mind had been filled with knowledge, both good and bad.

“He loved her deeply, our father, and wept as she lay dying after delivering her son. He promised to look after Jon and to keep the woman’s secret, so that Jon would grow up safe and unharmed by his friend,” Bran continued, undeterred.

“Which friend do you mean?” Robb asked this time, curious now despite his earlier askance and disbelief.

“The one you were named after,” Bran replied, although he thought that might have been obvious.

“Why would Robert Baratheon want to harm Jon? Why would anyone but his own wife care about Ned Stark fathering a bastard,” his mother hiccupped, the tears flowing freely now.

“Because he is not a bastard; he is the heir to the iron throne,” Bran said, as certain of this truth as he was certain of his own name, and the names of the family before him. It was why Jon’s alpha marking had come through instead of Robb’s; he was the rightful King.

“What do you mean?” Sansa enquired, trembling and holding her belly where Bran knew a babe now grew inside. It was as if his sister had suddenly realised the child she grew would be just as much of a threat to those warring in the south as Jon had been was when his mother birthed him in the Tower of Joy.

It was an odd name for a tower, Bran thought briefly, for he had seen no joy there.

“The woman our father loved was Lyanna Stark. It was the son that she bore after she was taken by Rhaegar Targaryen and made to marry him that our father brought home to Winterfell,” Bran declared, glad to be free of this secret and for the tale to finally be told.

“Why would Father lie to us?” Arya seethed. She didn’t like to talk of their father or Jon much these days.

“Because it had to be convincing,” Robb said, knowing his namesake had a temper far more legendary than his own. “He needed us to believe; he needed his wife’s contempt more than anything to conceal Jon’s identity. If King Robert had suspected that Rhaegar put a babe in our Aunt Lyanna and made her his wife, preventing him from marrying the woman he loved and forcing him to mourn her instead…” Robb did not need to complete the sentence.

“He made me hate him in order to save him,” their mother said quietly, her lower lip trembling and her eyes wide with realisation.

“So, Jon and Sansa won’t end up with a Joffrey then,” Arya announced, decidedly brighter than he had seen her in a long time. “You aren’t his sister,” she declared gleefully, looking at Sansa and smiling. Bran doubted it changed anything for Arya, except that she didn't have to despise her favourite brother any longer.

Bran had quite forgotten the way Arya’s eyes softened when she smiled. He had quite forgotten what it felt like to smile himself too. He attempted it now, looking around at a room full of his shocked but considerably relieved family.

Everyone, that is, except Sansa. Bran had thought she would be happy to hear the news, that she might even start planning for a wedding. She bit her lip though, looking every bit as frightened as she had been at the start.

“Bran, how do you know these things?” she asked him.

“My dreams. Some of them are of the future, like the one I sent to father, and some are the past,” Bran explained.

“What do you mean you sent your father a dream?” his mother asked now.

“If the dream is about someone else, someone I am close to, I can pass it onto them somehow: push it from my mind into theirs. I can’t explain it,” he owned.

“Did you give the dream to Jon, Bran? Does he know the truth of his parentage?” Robb asked, suddenly as frantic as their sister. His blue eyes burned the same as Sansa’s and it suddenly struck Bran how similar they looked, Jon’s beta and his omega.

“I did. It isn’t a choice though. It just happens that way,” Bran said, suddenly aware that he might be scolded and blamed for something that he couldn’t really control.

“So, Jon is in a den of dragons with the newfound knowledge that he is the true heir of the seven kingdoms and a far greater threat to the woman who summoned him than Stannis Baratheon ever could be,” Robb concluded, back to pacing the solar. “I should be with him, damn it!” he cursed.

Rickon seemed more decidedly more awake now, his mother still too shocked to move, Arya irritated and Sansa distraught. He had thought the knowledge would have brought them all more peace than it had.

“What of the future, Bran? What do you see for Jon now?” Sansa asked, standing from the chair and stalking towards him as if she planned to take the visions from his head with her will alone.

“I can’t be sure. I can't summon the dreams,” Bran admitted. 

“Try! Please Bran, for me,” she begged, gripping his hand much too tightly.

He barely had time to register the ache.

All at once the light of the fireplace was replaced by that of blinding flames and Bran wasn’t in the solar by his mother’s hearth or safe with his family anymore, but in a city set ablaze and looking up at the roar of a dragon.


	2. Dragons

“So much for your parlay,” said the small man beside him, his tone mocking, but his eyes filled with shock and regret.

“So much for your counsel,” Jon’s voice replied, terse in his response. 

Bran understood quickly that he was now with Jon in the South. He was able to see and hear his present fate, much in the same way as he had once seen into his past. He was able to feel his horror too. It was palpable.

This vision felt much too fixed and clear to be a future possibility, so he knew with instant relief and certainty that Jon was alive, but with great sorrow that the Red Keep was now a ruin.

The surrounding neighbourhoods were also set alight, the ordinary people who once lived there running and screaming in terror. Except for the dead, who Bran knew would never run or scream again. 

“A city ravaged by mad men and women once again. When will it ever stop?” a bald man added, staring pointedly at Jon.

“Before the whole of Westeros turns to ash, and there is nothing left to fight over, or so one hopes,” the small man declared ruefully, his eyes turning away from the terrible beauty mounted on top of a dragon, opting to stare at the flames and ruins instead.

Bran had always loved Old Nan’s stories of terrible things but seeing three dragons and the devastation they left in their wake with his own eyes, made him wish he could inhabit happier tales like the one Sansa used to read to him instead, of knights who fought with valour and served the ladies they loved.

Bran suddenly recalled Sansa and her worry over Jon, back where his body still was sitting by the gentler flames of the hearth. What could he possibly tell her to bring her comfort now?

Bran remembered too, that he once wanted to be a knight himself. He doubted there were any left in King’s Landing now, for surely, they would have burned along with everyone or else been cut down by the Dothraki announcing their victory loudly on top of their horses, or the unsullied soldiers quietly contemplating their own.

“They were both certain that they were destined to rule, refusing to listen to reason,” Jon raged. “Stannis was certain the god of light would protect him, with his red woman feeding him nonsense about fire purifying them and giving them victory, whilst your Queen believed the fire had birthed her children and chosen her to be the last true dragon,” Jon continued with disdain, his eyes fixed on the woman flying above and surveying the destruction she had dealt as punishment for those who had not bent the knee.

“Stannis and the red woman died, along with everyone else in the keep; along with what was left of my family, for not even the dungeons would not have been spared from the wreckage and flames. Whether I call her Queen now or not, I do not believe her being the last true dragon is a matter of contention,” the small man argued mournfully.

“No, but her being the rightful ruler of the seven kingdoms is,” the bald man exclaimed. “She may not care that there is another who is first in the line of succession, but the fact remains that his claim supersedes hers,” the bald man exclaimed, with a nod in Jon’s direction.

Bran realised the dream that he had shared with Jon was now, somehow, common knowledge, although he doubted by the pained expression on Jon’s face that he had given that information over willingly.

“I never wanted any of that. I don’t even know if the dream was real,” Jon bristled.

“I for one pay little attention to dreams and prophesies, but I do pay attention to the records of a maester I found in the citadel and the whispers of a good man like Howland Reed from the Neck,” the bald man replied. “You are an alpha of the North with the blood of old Valyria running through your veins. You are a capable solider and skilled swordsman, raised by the most honourable man I have ever met. There is no doubt that you should be on the Iron Throne and not a woman with the power to unleash chaos and destruction on a whim. She is no different to what has come before, only more of the same,” the bald man declared.

“You should have both kept your theories to yourself. It only served to make her more paranoid,” Jon grumbled, casting his aspersions on the two men by his side. The smaller of the two appeared to be on the verge of tears, probably mourning for his family.

“She needed to know that her claim could be contested. It was my responsibility as her hand to tell her so. I never thought this would be the outcome…” the small man trailed off.

“The Lannisters, the Baratheons, the Targaryens. They all wanted an iron throne, which has probably melted down to nothing now. What was the point in any of it? I could never be one of them. I am a Stark. I did what I promised to keep the North safe and now all I want is to go back there, to my home, my family and my mate,” Jon said, his voice turning wistful at that last word. Bran knew Jon missed Sansa as much as she missed him. Perhaps that was the comfort he could give his sister when she asked him next.

“Ned Stark had the opportunity to be King and didn’t take it, giving it over to a lesser man. You cannot make the same mistake. You cannot go North and give the rule of the seven kingdoms over to a tyrant like the ones who came before her, only this time, one with three dragons at her command,” the bald man implored.

“She will never let you go anyway,” the small man added.

Jon’s face was no longer wistful. Bran noticed his lip curled into a snarl. He had never seen him look more like a wolf.

“She can call herself Visenya if she wishes but I will never be her Aegon, or allow my mate to be her Rhaenys. She cannot have me, for I belong to my one woman alone, my omega, to my pack and to the North!” Jon barked angrily.

“The only way to stop her from taking what she wants is to take it away from her,” the bald man beseeched.

“Varys is right. If you don’t stop her, nobody will,” the small man acknowledged. 

Bran wanted to see Jon’s face, to see his reaction to their entreaty, but the vision refused to heed his request. He heard only the word, “Aye,” in a gruff Northern voice before the burning city faded from his view, leaving him only with the anxious face of his sister, her eyes filled with tears and her grip still sore around his arm.

“Bran? What did you see?” she begged.

“Jon. I saw Jon,” Bran answered truthfully.

“He’s alive?” Robb demanded.#

“Yes, and he is going to kill a dragon,” Bran explained.

“What?” someone squealed. Bran thought it might be Arya, but he was too tired and weak to check. He needed to rest, but not before telling Sansa what she needed to know.

“He is doing it for us all, Sansa, for the North. But he is also doing it for the woman he loves and the child she will give him.”

His arm was freed at last, his sister’s grip quickly turning into a warm embrace. Wrapped inside Sansa’s arms as she stifled her sobs and whispered her thanks, is where he decided he would take his rest. He hoped, as he felt himself lulled into sleep by the softness of her prayers to the old gods and the lavender in her hair, that there would be no dreams of dragons to trouble him this time. Perhaps instead, he might dream of being knight at a tourney instead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I debated whether to turn comment moderation on and delete a particular anonymous comment, that made me hating my fics and wanting to quit and delete the entire series. 
> 
> I have not turned comment moderation on yet because I was once an anonymous commenter, worried that having an account would make me even more obsessed than I already was. I don't want one person to spoil it for all the people without accounts who may have something positive to say.
> 
> I have not deleted the comment because I thought that other people's feedback on how to deal with negative criticism was actually really helpful and would not make sense without the context.
> 
> Lastly I wanted people to be able to see my reaction and know that comments can have a big impact on someone's emotional and mental wellbeing. Whenever I am reading a fic and considering posting a comment I ask myself two things:
> 
> 1) Will this encourage and inspire this unpaid writer to continue with their work?  
> 2) If I am unhappy with some of the content or characterisation, do I know how this person will take any constructive criticism of their work and what else may be going on for them in real life that may cause them to react badly to the sting of my comment?
> 
> If the answer is no I click on the back button and find something else to read. Simple.


End file.
